1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disc loading mechanism which ejects a disc from a disc cartridge which stores discs without using a disc tray, and in particular, to a disc loading mechanism of a disc cartridge in which insertion and ejection of a disc can be performed by separating a cartridge main body.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, various drive apparatuses for a disc cartridge in which an optical disc is stored have been provided. This kind of disc drive apparatus is provided with a shutter opening and closing mechanism which draws a cartridge main body into an apparatus main body and also opens a shutter that blocks an opening portion for recording and reproducing formed in the cartridge main body. Then, in the disc drive apparatus, by opening of the opening portion for recording and reproducing, an optical pickup mechanism faces in the radial direction of the optical disc, thereby performing writing and/or reading of an information signal.
However, in recent years, recording capacity of a disc-like recording medium has been dramatically increased, thereby having the capacity necessary to store the amount of information which is handled at the individual level. On the other hand, even in a case where an ultra-multilayer disc or a volumetric recording disc, in which a practical application is expected in the future, is applied to a cloud computer data center or a system in which the recording and storage of large-volume data are necessary, in a case where like a Blu-ray Disc (BD) or a Professional Disc, a disc is stored in a cartridge one by one, recording capacity in one cartridge will be insufficient in the future.
Also, if it is tried to configure a data center by using a disc loader machine or a cart machine, which deals with a number of disc cartridges, each of which stores a high-capacity disc, an increase in space use efficiency is insufficient.
As its solution, configurations in which a number of sheet-like discs are stored in one cartridge are proposed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication Nos. 2004-134019 (Patent Document 1), 2007-115328 (Patent Document 2), and 2007-172726 (Patent Document 3). However, in such configurations, the same number of dedicated disc trays as the number of discs which can be stored is necessary, thereby causing increases in size and weight of a cartridge main body and a drive apparatus, into which the cartridge main body is inserted. Also, on the disc drive apparatus side which drives the disc, a mechanism which transports the disc tray and also ejects only the disc from the disc tray is necessary or the like, so that a disc loading mechanism is complicated and increased in size. Also, a mechanism for stabilizing the rotation of the sheet-like disc is necessary or the like, so that problems such as increases in size and cost of an apparatus main body also arise.